Wii U: Are U Confused?

There's not usually much to misunderstand about a new console announcement. "LOOK AT IT! THIS IS WHAT IT DOES!", the platform holders traditionally bellow, rolling out gratuitous lifestyle trailers and lists of specs and wildly ambitious claims about how much better it is than anything else you have ever imagined. Of course there's usually some carefully-managed ambiguity around things like the launch price, and follow-up details get drip-fed to us weeks and months later, but usually we get a clear first impression.

The Wii U, though – a lot of people weren't even clear whether it actually was a new console, or just a new controller for the Wii, or an independently-functioning tablet. We're all still speculating like irresponsible bankers about its specifications, its storage, its power, how it measures up to the PS3 and 360, how many controllers it supports and whether it will have a Zelda and a Mario (ha ha ha).

Some of this is Nintendo being deliberately cagey, but some of it's down to the way the company revealed and explained its new device. Generally, if you announce a new console and people aren't sure whether or not it actually is a new console, you've done something wrong. So why didn't people understand, and was it Nintendo's fault?

Both Nintendo's reveal showreel (which you can look at below) and the press conference itself centred on the Wii U's most intriguing new feature: the touch-screen controller. We were shown some amazing demonstrations of what it's theoretically capable of – live streaming from console to controller, touch-screen shuriken-throwing, playing games of tic-tac-toe on the controller even when the console is (apparently) turned off.

Exit Theatre Mode

The unit itself does appear in the showreel, but only in the background, under the TV. It's this that largely seems to have led to consumer confusion. From a distance, it looks like a curvy Wii, and the prominence of other Wii accessories like the Balance Board and the remote and nunchuk in Nintendo's announcement showreel led a lot of people to believe that the Wii U was just another controller for the Wii.

It's understandable why this might have happened. Although Reggie Fils-Aime and Satoru Iwata's presentations made repeated reference to the machine's HD graphical capabilities and increased power, which makes it pretty clear that they were indeed talking about a new console, the fact that no clear image of the actual console was shown allowed confusion and speculation to propagate.

As IGN reported yesterday, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata admitted as much to the London Evening Standard after the E3 presentation, stating that Nintendo "should have shown a single picture of the new console, then started talking about the controller." One prominent photograph is all it would have taken.

But Nintendo's justification for omitting to do so – that the most interesting thing about the Wii U is the controller, and the presentation was better spent showing how different it is and what it can do than showing pictures of an uninteresting box – makes sense. The publisher essentially trusted its audience to understand that they were talking about a new console, and a considerable majority did just that.

Just this one picture of the Wii U console would have helped.

It's nice to be credited with basic intelligence. Sitting in the presentation, it was abundantly clear what the Wii U was. The problems arose from second-hand reporting and people viewing the announcement and the showreel out of context, without Fils-Aime and Iwata's verbal explanations.

There's also the matter of naming. Wii U sounds like a Wii add-on, especially to the millions of people who won't have been following every moment of E3. Nintendo's decision to stick with the Wii branding shows justified faith in the brand that's broadened gaming further than any games console has ever achieved before, but it also has the potential to confuse consumers.